We Moved to New York!

We're on the road again! Even though we have spent several days making car trips into that little chunk of Pennsylvania that touches Lake Erie, the motor home hadn't crossed that state line until this day. So we had to take the obligatory picture of Pennsylvania's welcome sign.

We have been enjoying the rich colors of the flowering goldenrods for the last weeks, and they were beautiful on our drive. The flowers have completely taken over entire fields along the highway.

We weren't in Pennsylvania for long before we hit the New York state line. The sign says this new state is welcoming us, but we didn't feel very welcome as our interstate turns to a toll road at the state line. We knew about this toll, so we veered onto a different highway rather than paying the high tolls charged to motor homes towing a car. We've heard from other RVers that driving across New York will cost over $100 if we stay on the expressway.

It was a three hour drive to our new campground at Beaver Meadow Family Campground. The post office address is Java Center, but basically the only thing in that village is the post office building. That reminds us of another difference we have seen lately in our travels. Instead of towns, we are finding villages, hamlets, and townships. We're not sure what the definitional difference is, but some places even use the terms on their speed limit signs.

We arrived at Beaver Meadow Campground on a Sunday afternoon when the office was closed. This is the first time we have ever stayed at a campground with an un-manned guard gate. Every time we came to the gate, we had to call to have the arm of the entry gate opened. We didn't exactly feel welcome to our new home when we had to call four times before the gate actually opened for the motor home to enter.

The swimming pool was already closed for the season, but we did try out the giant jump pad before we left.

But our favorite part of Beaver Meadows Family Campground was meeting new friends Tony and Sharon. They feel like our twins, full-timing in a motor home for the same length of time and loving it! They invited us to "break bread" with them one evening, and we completely forgot to take a picture of the beautiful meal and our hosts.

Totally unrelated to that great meal or our hosts, we thought it was interesting that we are only a mile from the Biggest Loser NY Resort. A mile in another direction is the Beaver Meadow Audubon Center. After we were educated about the local birds and wildlife at the nature center, we took a nice hike through their trail system. You can barely see Denisa's head in the middle of another field of that golden goldenrod.

We are patiently waiting for the trees to put on their fall foliage colors. When she spots red and orange leaves, Denisa yells, "Changing leaves!" That chant is happening more and more often now as our night-time temperatures are dropping and the days are getting shorter.

Our hike took us through fields of golden rod. That bright gold with a clear blue sky is almost as beautiful as a red maple tree.

Do you get the feeling that Denisa is really enjoying the fall floral colors? On our hike we saw a deer, a woodchuck, geese, ducks, and a great blue heron. No pictures of any of those, but we did take a picture of a tiny snail that was enjoying the goldenrod almost as much as Denisa.

This was a nice walk through the woods, but it was highlighted by the best trail snacks we have found in a very long time. We have noticed wild apple trees along the highway, but we actually saw one up close on the trail. The apples just go to waste around here, as they are usually too small to be worth harvesting.

Tiny in size, we found a few still on the tree. They were crisp and juicy, and they make for a great hiking snack!

Speaking of apples, several days ago we bought a sampling of the apples raised at a local orchard. We have now completed the taste test of our apple sample, many with names that we didn't recognize from grocery shopping in the midwest.

In the order in the picture above, we found McIntosh to be nicely tart and crunchy, Gingergold to be a mellow softer apple taste that resists browning, and Paula Red was a good taste but with a tough skin. We have tried Gala many times before and this one was a standard Gala sweet taste. Tydeman Red was mild and less firm, but our favorite was the Honeycrisp--sweetly tart and crisp. 

We might like that Honeycrisp best because we visited with the owner of that orchard. He explained that this apple was harder to pick because they don't ripen at the same time. Each tree has to be gone over 5-6 times to pick only the ones that are ready each time. On other kinds of apple trees, all the fruit ripens at the same time, so a tree can be picked bare in one setting. We bought the Honeycrisp from the man that had cared for the trees all year, and carefully picked the ripened fruit that morning. You just can't get that fresh feeling from a bag of apples you purchase at Walmart.